Weekly Worker 436 Thursday June 13 2002
Letters
Ukraine alliance
We are the Communist Struggle group, active in four Ukrainian cities. Our organisation includes 25 active members and about 30 supporters. We were established in autumn 2002 after our split from Komsomol - the youth organisation of the bureaucratic and Stalinist CP. Before that we had our platform in Komsomol for about a year. Our platform tried to conduct a consistent policy of struggle against Stalinism and great-Russian chauvinism.
We split from Komsomol, along with some sectarian Trotskyist groups, and participated in the establishment of so-called Anti-Fascist Komsomol - an attempt to build a non-Stalinist revolutionary youth organisation. However, the sectarian struggle and mutual distrust of different sects (Workers Power, IBT, ITO, Ukrainian Workers Tendency - supporters of the UK Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Healyites, etc) condemned this good idea to virtual collapse.
Using Anti-Fascist Komsomol as their base, Workers Power established Revo, which was relatively large in number and controlled by their organisation. We also tried to participate in Revo, but we had no possibility of doing useful work inside it because of its strong bureaucratic structure and open Workers Power domination.
Under these conditions we are forced at the moment to work solely as an independent organisation. However, the main point of out present tactic is the call for the establishment of a broad, socialist, anti-Stalinist alliance like the Socialist Alliance in the UK. We think that this alliance should develop into real mass socialist party. We know that the CPGB plays a key role in maintaining the unity of the SA in Britain, even though the Socialist Party has left.
We had and are having some discussions with the Ukrainian Workers Tendency - the organisation of supporters of UK AWL. We agree with some of their programmatic documents. However, in our opinion, they are not able at the moment to overcome a lot of dogmatic, authoritarian and sectarian Trotskyist theses. Because of this we didn’t merge with them in March 2002.
Since our establishment we have tried to find comrades internationally, clearly understanding the impossibility of limiting ourselves to the national framework. We have researched the materials of a lot of international communist organisations, but have been quite disappointed to find that a huge majority of them have the same problems as Ukrainian organisations - sectarianism and not completely overcoming the heritage of Stalinism.
Only very recently we found the website of the CPGB and were very positively impressed by the high level of theoretical development and the complete absence of any sectarian approach. We think that your organisation could have the historical chance to be a core of a new real mass workers’ party in the UK and internationally.
What do you think about the international perspectives of the CPGB? Do you have some materials on this issue? We think that our organisations could have fruitful cooperation. What do you think?
Alexander Pinskiy
Ukraine
Falsification
We were highly amused up here to read John Malcolm’s rather mischievous letter on Teesside Socialist Alliance (Weekly Worker June 6). Objecting to my description of the TSA as “vibrant”, John accuses me of Stalinist falsification. In the aftermath of our extremely useful CPGB day school perhaps we were a little ‘dizzy with success’, but we still find that, with all of its problems, the TSA is a good forum for building an independent working class politics in the north-east. Having deserted the whole project months ago, John and his Socialist Party comrades have abandoned our critical and totally non-sectarian project to really make the SA a focus for building a new united Communist Party.
Being absent from the SA debates on Teesside, John is “reliably informed” that through sectarianism and “clumsiness” the CPGB comrades have alienated all of the independents here. Yet, ironically, it was the CPGB that were John’s ‘reliable informants’ on both the problems in the TSA and the sharp debates and arguments that have been a major feature of the local alliance since the departure of the Socialist Party. We have struggled against the downplaying of what we considered to be major political issues to be addressed in the TSA, yet in hindsight we still feel that the mayoral campaign was worth doing and that the ideas of the SA reached a large audience in Middlesbrough. John undoubtedly levels the charge of sectarianism against us because we wanted to discuss ideas as well as hand out leaflets.
I am surprised, however, that John himself is not averse to a little falsification. I certainly would not stoop to calling it “Stalinist”, but “falsification” it was. He has me stating (in a meeting last September) that anyone who condemned the September 11 attacks was a “tree-hugging hippie”. Actually the ironic comment was directed at two members of the Teesside Against the War group panel - one of whom was seriously arguing that John Lennon’s Imagine should be the basis of an anti-war programme. The other, rather surprisingly in an anti-war meeting, registered his support for nice Mr Blair’s prosecution of the war seemingly on the grounds that his Quakerism entailed peaceful feelings to all - including the warmongers.
My intervention recognised the dangerous nature of reactionary anti-imperialism but stressed the historical context of imperialism and the rise of fundamentalism. John responded by accusing me of advocating individual terrorism, as he did again in his letter last week. The search to understand the cause of these atrocities is not analogous to the search to justify them - quite the opposite.
Martyn Hudson
Teesside
Education strike
Striking lecturers at South Bank University (SBU) are calling for a national demonstration to protest at the continuation of failed Tory education policies by the Labour government. The strikers believe that October would be the right time to mobilise staff and students at the start of the new academic year.
Pickets were out at the beginning of the strike on June 11 and reported solid support. The strike is set to continue for three days. This will be followed up by withholding examination marks and further industrial action should that prove necessary.
Lecturers at SBU are taking this action because of government-imposed cuts in the University budget of £6.1m this year and £8.5m next year. This has resulted in 128 redundancies, including 50 in the business school. The government have targeted most of their cuts on the new universities, which are already disadvantaged by the class system of funding. Cuts will mean that working class and ethnic minority students will have larger class sizes and less choices about the subjects they will be allowed to take.
Higher education minister Margaret Hodge has done nothing to support staff and students. She has made the cuts and then washed her hands of the situation. She cannot meet union representatives until after the sackings are carried out. It is an attitude of callous indifference. But she is only carrying out the policies of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
The current system of funding is based on institutionalised discrimination against working class and ethnic minority students. The Tories were content to see ‘lower class’ students get lower class funding and the Labour government has continued this system. Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer, wanted a few more places for working class students at Cambridge, whilst cutting funding to those ‘new’ universities like South Bank where the bulk of working class students get their education. At Cambridge, for example, funding per capita is over £9,000 whilst funding at South Bank is around £4,500 per student. This is despite the fact that multiple deprivations suffered by working class and ethnic minority students require an estimated £3,000 per head extra funding to cover the costs of extending higher education to those traditionally excluded.
These are not the only problems in higher education. Rising student debt, in a system of tuition fees and loans, has made poverty a major issue for students. The system of governance set up by the Tories in the ‘new’ universities has meant that management are not properly accountable. Management can make mistake after mistake without being brought to account. The cost of mismanagement is then borne by ordinary staff in cuts and redundancies.
South Bank lecturers should be supported for taking this stand. But we cannot fight cuts and redundancies department by department, university by university. We need a national campaign uniting staff and students. We need to extend and improve higher education and make it an opportunity which is free and equal for all.
SBU Natfhe
Strike committee
CPGB adaptation
We in Brent Socialist Alliance have not seen hide or hair of your comrades since a selection meeting before the general election at which we decided not to stand one of your members in Brent East. Odd that, since you so often claim to be so non-sectarian and determined to ‘push the project forward’. Mind you, those who proclaim their principles most loudly are often the least principled.
More seriously, on Palestine. No one can condone ‘suicide bombings’. Neither would any socialist put an equals sign between the US and British-backed Zionist state and the desperate Palestinians. You claim to be in favour of a united secular state, yet you argue for a two-states solution in the infinite interim. Pandering to Zionism now will not bring one step nearer the secular state, which socialists rightly call for. Arguing for a secular state cuts across the arguments of the islamists also because they fear it no less that the Zionists.
But then adapting to reactionary elements under the guise of progressive politics is what you do best, however ludicrous the outcome, via ‘three and one sixth’-county self-determination in Ireland. Pandering to unionist reaction in such a manner is a complete distortion of Lenin’s conception of self-determination and the national question. The not-so-surprising thing in all of this is the adaptation to imperialism. Both the British and the US are now in favour of a two-states solution in Palestine and Ireland.
I wonder why. Could it be that partition - policed of course by the imperialists - encourages just the kind of reactionary petty bourgeois forces who are most eager to do deals with imperialism and who can hold their own working classes in the thrall of religious and national divides, thereby weakening them and walling them off from workers’ unity and socialist politics?
Socialists often criticise the adaptation of the Stalinists to imperialism - ‘peaceful coexistence’ being the latest and most misnamed. Surely the post-Stalinist CPGB are not adapting to a resurgent imperialism under the guise of self-determination and working class unity. That really would be offensive - at any time of the year.
Padraic Finn
Brent
Israel democracy
I was shocked into writing this letter by the ludicrous, bizarre and hysterically dramatic views about the Middle East from Jesse Wiseman (Letters, May 23). I’d like to thank the Weekly Worker for publishing Wiseman’s letter, as it provides a good example of the kind of hogwash that the pro-peace lobby has to contend with.
Wiseman should keep in mind when making these absurd statements that some of the recent actions of the Israeli government (ie, Jenin and Ramallah) certainly don’t warrant a pat on the back from anyone. Certainly anyone who believes in the concept of democracy should be at the front of the queue to condemn Israel.
I’m no expert on the Middle East, but I follow the Israeli-Palestinian situation closely. There has been nothing, particularly within the last six-eight months that has convinced me that Israel is the “free and democratic country” that Wiseman claims it is. If I’m wrong, then Israel’s democracy has been achieved and is maintained by state-sanctioned genocide, ethnic cleansing, religious intolerance and overtly extreme militarism to keep Palestinian (not forgetting land seized from Syria) territory occupied. Would Wiseman expect us to swallow the lie that Israel is a legitimate democracy when it deems the massacre of innocent Palestinian women and children in refugee camps as necessary to its survival?
With a butcher and a maniac like Sharon at the helm what should we expect? Strange that Wiseman can watch the procession of Israeli tanks moving into the Palestinian Authority-administered areas without any pangs of guilt! Leaving aside Sharon’s record of butchery in Lebanon, even the most ardent of Zionist zealots and Israeli government stooges (Wiseman take note!) can’t be taken in with such obvious misinformation.
I’d ask Wiseman to consider, since the terrorist question was raised, how far Israel is involved in its export and the promotion of religious sectarianism beyond its pre-1948 borders. The Sharon government continues to provide logistical and political support for extreme Zionist/jewish racist paramilitary organisations in the occupied territories. No mention is made by Wiseman of the state-sponsored ‘settler’ militias that murder and violently intimidate their way (with the full cooperation of the Israeli Defence Force) to ever more generous subsidies from the Israeli taxpayer. Let’s not forget the billions of dollars given yearly to Israel from the United States. Does Wiseman have any criticism to make about any of these?
Spinelessness can be found amongst even the most courageous of people. Those who hide behind Zionist propaganda and expect to be taken at face value should try and live in the real world for a while instead of the fantasy world perpetuated by Sharon’s government and the genocidal policies that are obviously inspired by Mein Kampf rather than the Torah.
My real reason for writing is to offer the Weekly Worker and the Communist Party of Great Britain a sincere thank-you for its help with my dissertation research. I have recently completed my politics degree at London Guildhall University and wrote my dissertation on the Socialist Workers Party. To be specific, my dissertation title was ‘How relevant is the SWP today?’ In the process I looked at various aspects of the SWP and their campaigns.
Where the Weekly Worker came in valuable for my research was the weekly coverage of Socialist Alliance news which was, in most cases, absent from many SWP publications (Socialist Worker and Socialist Review in particular). As I’ve found, the SWP only bothers to waste print space in its publications when there is an SWP angle! The Socialist Alliance was one area where the Weekly Worker helped to inform me (and hopefully the tutors reading my dissertation) why the SWP has changed its electoral strategy and why its attitude to the alliance remains confusing at best.
I’ll continue reading the Weekly Worker because it is, in my opinion, well worth the 50p! (having been an avid reader since March last year). Although I should make clear I am not a CPGB stooge, as I’m a member of the Democratic Unionist Party.
Andrew Cassidy
Essex
Kashmir
Ian Donovan makes some relevant points on Kashmir (Weekly Worker June 6). However, he fails to explain that the so-called ‘advanced’ countries and their policies of divide and rule and arms sales have been instrumental in destabilising the region. Didn’t you know that the Inter-Services Intelligence was in fact set up by a British general - and that a lot of their ‘top brass’ were trained at Sandhurst?
Like all other conflicts, including Israel/Palestine, etc, we need working class cadres to direct them so that they do not fall under sectarian tribal control. A common base is that brutalities and terrorism (bombing, rape, etc) must stop first. This is possibly why the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) finds it hard to gain a voice. Islamic fundamentalism is just a cry from the poor and a failure of the Peoples Party Pakistan and Labour Party Pakistan socialist groups to unite (not unlike France, UK, etc at the moment) - whilst some of the Indian CPs are still enamoured of the ‘third way’ experiment.
The ruling elites more than ever perhaps hope for population decrease and a mad rush for resources - the contradictions becoming more apparent. However, it is up to the current vanguards of the Pakistani, Indian, Israeli communist parties to try to forge a common way, whether or not the ruling elites try to subvert this. The vanguards of the European communists need to support their brothers and sisters overseas.
Deva
email
Beware Sparts
The bourgeois disinformation service has certainly done its job well. Recently, while attending an Anti-Nazi League rally in London, in a debate outside the meeting I was told by a Spartacist, selling Workers Hammer, that Stalin was responsible for killing 30 million communists. Nor was this person a teenager but someone who seemed to have been around the Spartacists for a long time.
To my knowledge, the former Communist Party of the Soviet Union reached its highest membership of around 19 million, and this number was reached in the 1980s. I write this letter because I think that all those participating in the workers’ liberation movement must beware of the type of bourgeois disinformation spread by the likes of the Spartacists. I will conclude by asking: where did the 30 million communists, whom Stalin is supposed to have killed, come from?
Bill Spode
London
